Young people today are having too much sex. Wait, no, maybe they're not having enough sex. And when they do have sex, it's the wrong kind—too porn-influenced, too gay, too…something. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong: that's the main refrain we hear about young people and sex.
Carter Sherman isn't interested in telling today's youth that they're doing sex right or wrong. But she is interested in the ways politics, culture, and technology are radically reshaping sex for millennials and members of Gen Z. "We are living through nothing less than the second coming of the sexual revolution," she proclaims in The Second Coming: Sex and the Next Generation's Fight Over Its Future, out this week.
I recently spoke with Sherman about her book, hookup culture, the sex recession, dictionary porn, abstinence-only education, and more. Here's a transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for clarity and length.
